Kettering District!
 

Who is ready for week 1 Kettering District???

Re: Kettering District!
 

3322 is ready!!

Let's take a look at the teams:
33 Killer Bees
51 Wings of Fire
70 More Martians
302 The Dragons
314 The Megatron Oracles
322 Team F.I.R.E.
326 Oh gosh. 326. I feel bad for the announcer whenever he has to say your name… :D
468 Aftershock
494 Martians
703 Team Phoenix
862 Lightning Robotics
894 Chargers
1243 Dragons
1322 GRAYT Leviathons
1502 1502 Technical Difficulties
1504 Desperate Penguins
1506 Metal Muscle
1684 Chimeras
1701 RoboCubs
1711 SCI-MA-TECH Raptors
2137 TORC
2337 EngiNERDS
2604 Metal and Soul
2611 Jacktown Vectors
2627 Techies
3302 TurboTrojans
3322 Eagle Imperium
3415 The RAMS
3421 Tachyon TECs
3534 House of Cards
3535 GalakTech Invaders
3536 Electro Eagles
3537 Delta Force
3568 Roboeagles
3601 Spartan Sprockets
3769 Droids
4294 StarTREC
4376 Raydernators
4382 SHS Trojans

EDIT: GOSH! I was just about to create a thread on this very subject. Had a team list ready and everything!!!!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Very nice!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Some T3 members will be there as well, testing out our new scouting formulas :cool:

Re: Kettering District!
 

I will personally be there, hopefully bringing some students, to take pictures and testing out scouting sheets and recording some matches.

I encourage all students (and parents) that attend this event to take a tour of the Kettering campus! I'm sure they will have a booth set up where you can sign up for just such a thing.

Re: Kettering District!
 

Of course Team 326 is ready, and all 78 characters of our name. Don't fear John, Tom Nadar loved doing it last year!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Kettering always has a recruiting booth set up between the stands and the concessions areas with information on tours, and Kettering in general. And they have raffles for free Kettering apparel too, usually. Always worth a visit!

Re: Kettering District!
 

And he's running away to Gull Lake this year so he doesn't have to say it again!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Figured he'd be there...

Re: Kettering District!
 

Re: Kettering District!
 

Not to seem like a "home room monitor".. but.

How about mixing up the numbers so we can be by OTHER teams that we have not been next to before. ( No offense 1502 Technical Difficulties or 1506 Metal Muscle). As wanna be engineers I think that the nerds etc on our teams can find our pits without them having to be in numerical order, Mix it up first, stop being so.... orderly ( numerically assigned pits).

Re: Kettering District!
 

The reason we do it in order is for queing. It is easier for them to chase the teams down. It also makes it easy for other teams to find you.

Re: Kettering District!
 

I'm very interested in watching this regional, but I don't have the time or the gas money to drive to Michigan :( . Any word of a webcast for Kettering?

Re: Kettering District!
 

Team 2771, Code Red Robotics, is awesome and webcasts every FiM event. Here is their site:

http://www.coderedrobotics.com/webcast/

Re: Kettering District!
 

Awesome! Thank you!

Re: Kettering District!
 

To add on to what someone already mentioned:

They tried mixing up the numbers in the past. Too many people complained that they couldn't find the other teams (for strategy discussions, scouting, etc). I guess no matter what you do, someone is not going to be happy.

Re: Kettering District!
 

Congratulations to the winning alliance: 2337, 33, and 4294!

2337, you were first on our pick list and really improved throughout the competition. 33, you improved a TON since your first couple matches and really figured out the strategy for this game. 4294, your bridge balancing skills were phenomenal.

I would like to thank 862 for picking us and 3601 for joining our alliance. We knew that 3601 would work great for our plan in autonomous, but we had no idea that 862 would fit in perfectly! 6 three-pointers in autonomous is an amazing feat. Car Nack said it couldn't be done, and we proved him wrong.

Everyone should watch the video of our autonomous working in the finals if such a video ends up existing. It really is amazing... a FIRST Rube Goldberg machine.

The Eagle Imperium will be at Livonia and in the intervening weeks we will fix our problems so that we don't stop moving halfway through matches. I promise!

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3oNVwsSWns
EDIT: Better video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqXTZyHvM4A

Re: Kettering District!
 

Agreed. Allow me to quote the description of our Rube Goldberg machine from another post.

Re: Kettering District!
 

Great event!

Congratulations to 2337, 33, & 4294 you guys were a great alliance and we had great time competing against you.

Thanks to 3322 and 3601 you guys were a great alliance partners. The autonomous mode was one of the coolest things I've seen! We had some amazing matches.

Re: Kettering District!
 

does anyone have pictures of all the robots from this competition?

Re: Kettering District!
 

Great job 2337, 33, and 4294~ You guys were an amazing alliance to play against.

Just a look behind the scenes of setting up the Kettering event.

Re: Kettering District!
 

What a great time today and yesterday. Being across the glass from you all was a challenge and an honor! Thank you to the Killer Bees and to Star Trec for helping us win our first ever Kettering District Competition! And what a great alliance in 862, 3322, and 3601! Good luck to everyone in the rest of the season! I hope to see some of you at Northville

Re: Kettering District!
 

I was unable to attend Kettering this year (the first time of my 4 years) and had some questions about designs and strategies. How was defense played and was it effective? How often did the refs swap out the balls? Can someone explain to me more about the Killer Bee's (33) stinger (bridge balancer). Any other tips for a fellow Michigan team heading for Canada next week? Looks like its going to be another fun year in Michigan.

Re: Kettering District!
 

As far a defense goes, there was little to none played since most teams either shot from the key (where it would be a penalty to interfere) or from up against the fender. In addition many teams brought drivetrains with high traction so pushing wasn't very effective most of the times it was tried. The Killer Bee's "stinger" was basically a large 4-bar mechanism from what I remember, helping them to get off the ground once on the bridge and if they were unbalanced it could hold the bridge up and provide a level driving surface for adjustments, as opposed to having to drive uphill after coming crashing down. The advice that I would give would be to try to come up with ways to complement the autonomous modes of robots on your alliance, I'm on team 862 and our alliance's autonomous mode in eliminations carried our alliance into the finals and within 1 match of winning. Also make sure to give yourselves plenty of time to balance on the bridge if you choose to do so. Nothing is more depressing than being almost balanced then having teleop end and watching your robot slide back down.
Sorry about the wall of text by the way :)

Oh and as far as swapping out balls went, our referees only changed a ball when there was a chunk missing from it. So be ready for shooting later in the competition to become a little unpredictable.

Re: Kettering District!
 

Our shooter remains quite predictable throughout the competition due to the way we compress balls.

Re: Kettering District!
 

I'm actually quite surprised: our autonomous mode seemed to be more consistent with more worn balls, so when setting up pre-match, we often tried to get less-new-feeling balls. Still, at the end of the competition, the balls were still in surprisingly good shape. Especially, that is, compared to some of the balls we had at our shop. I'm personally not too worried about ball wear.

Re: Kettering District!
 

A big thank you to the event staff at Kettering. Having gone there for several years now, this was by far the smoothest. Just a couple very minor delays early on, and then the event seemed to be running at lightning speed.
Congratulations to the 3 rookies on site 4382 was highest seed. 4376 had one of the best attitudes in FRC. It was a real pleasure working with this team to get them out on the field. I was glad to see them take home a couple awards. More on 4294 later...

To the finalists... what an exciting finals. 862, 3322, and 3601 were an amazing alliance. There auto-mode with the 3 robots working in concert was a thing of beauty. 30+3 points in auto was amazing. 3322 was a deadly accurrate shooter, and 862 had a very versatile machine, and 3601 was a very complimentary robust 3rd parnter. I love watching good play, and the 66-68 finals match was amazing with several lead changes right at the end.

2337, thank you for having faith and vision of a winning strategy. We had a lot of problems with our shooter on Friday, and it was inspiring that you guys had that much faith in our alliance. 4294, are you guys sure you are rookies? For all of you vetrans out there, this rookie team was one of the first to pass inspection, and was clean on their first pass. NO CORRECTIONS! This continued to be one of the more reliable machines throughout the competition. A special thanks to our friends up in the Crow... er ... Chicken's Nest for some strategic insight. Little changes can make a big difference.

GDC, thank you for an exciting game. Week 1 is often painful to watch as teams learn how to score and get their machines dialed in. The Co-Op bridge is an exciting twist that I expect will have several more turns in its importance and how it is utilized.

Re: Kettering District!
 

I didn't pay attention to all of the matches as I was in the pit for a lot of the tournament dealing with judges and doing some scouting via inspection of robot rather than games, and I just wanted to say to Team 33 that you guys did an incredible job improving over the competition.

The first few games that I personally saw with you guys looked a little shaky, but by the time you guys got out into the elimination matches you guys were going strong. And your stinger worked terrifically.

The final matches wouldn't have been fun if not for such strong competition. :)

Re: Kettering District!
 

I had an absolute riot at Kettering! My team did not do well until it was too late to bring us up, but we are really happy with how things came out. Once we figured out how to most effectively work the field and alliances things went a lot smoother. Thanks to all the Kettering staff as well as all of the teams that put up with my running back and forth running strategy with them!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Here's a video of us testing the autonomous code during lunch (we didn't get to test the slight modification which put us within the time limit, but we made 862 fire two seconds quicker): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zo-SUmQRjRM

And one someone else uploaded: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4Id9IR_HCU

Re: Kettering District!
 

Kettering Finals Match 001

Kettering Finals Match 002

Kettering Finals Match 003

Re: Kettering District!
 

Those were AMAZING matches. In Match 3 the winning score was DOUBLE the highest qualifications score! Great robots from both alliances, but I really liked how 3322 could score their entire alliance's worth of balls in hybrid!

Re: Kettering District!
 

Here's a video of one of the matches at Kettering.
Red Alliance: 1322, 33, 3534
Blue Alliance: 322, 3302, 1243
Final score: 25-10, Red Alliance wins
Match video.

Re: Kettering District!
 

It seemed like the ball condition REALLY didn't change our autonomous mode all that much. The only time we missed our autonomous balls was when we didn't have the RPM set correctly for our autonomous code (a discrepancy between practice bot and comp bot, that we didn't figure out on the practice field until later), and when we doubted our method of lining up our robot.

Re: Kettering District!
 

First of all, thanks to Kettering University and the FIRST volunteers who made this competition work. Team 2337 has been attending the Kettering Regional or Kettering District for all of the five years of the team's existence, and it truly means a lot having a competition in Flint, as well as getting to see old and new friends again.

With that, comes the shoutouts. Thank you to our alliance members, 33 and 4294. 33, it has always been a personal dream to be competing with you, not against, in eliminations. Your team has always been an inspiration to me of what it means to be a FIRST team, from the bee-utiful robots to the outreach and inspiration you provide to other teams as well. Your robot this year is fantastic; just as well-performing as its paint job. From the intake/bridge manipulator to the turret to the "stinger", it was great to see you guys performing on Saturday.

4294, I am impressed with the capabilities of your team and your robot. You guys undertook building a custom drivetrain (three-wheeled with a front wheel on a caster like a tricycle) and a great bridge manipulator. Yet, you didn't try to be the "jack of all trades, but master of none"; StarTrec stuck to what they could design well, and executed. Thanks for being a integral member of our alliance.

Then there was the finalist alliance: 3322, 862, and 3601. 3322, you guys have a simple, yet elegant intake and shooter. Congratulations on such an effective design. Lightning, I love your robot's design, and that it's intended to shoot from the feeder. It's a scoring machine! 3601, it was great having you at Premier this build season, and watching your robot become the best you guys could make. Like 4294, you guys stuck to designs you know you could do well, and didn't try to overextend yourself. I have the highest respect for your team (and for the award you gave us :D ). Your whole alliance's hybrid mode was simply terrifying. The prospect of being down 2 balls (12 points) at the beginning of Teleop was scary.

I also want to thank 1504's programmers, for helping me with Java and the WPI library as I struggled with code for another team. On 2337, we use LabVIEW, and seeing a text-based language being used gave us a lot to think about.

And then there was 1684, on the #2 alliance, who allowed me to borrow a team laptop (with their code open in NetBeans), to write the Java. This was an astonishing feat of co-opertition, and I cannot thank you enough for the opportunity. It was also fantastic to see your team's growth over the last couple of years, from Breakaway to Logomotion to the devastating robot this year, that held the number one ranking spot for a long amount of time. It's only a matter of time before you guys have a district win under your belt.

Re: Kettering District!
 

Yesterday was an amazing day for the Spartan Sprockets (Team 3601). In the last few preliminary rounds our drive team did a really good job of balancing, but with a qualifying round ranking of 32 we were on pins and needles wondering if anyone would notice our capablities. Luckily someone did notice us and in the short period of time before the eliminations rounds our allaince was able to combine our robots to put together an amazing autonomous strategy. It was truly an exciting expereince.